A few days ago I tested transmission bittorrent client on a headless box. I must say that is too stable comparing it to deluge (deluge I still love you!). Here is the tutorial about how to setup up transmission with remote GUI(transGUI) and webUI on a headless Ubuntu 14.04. Plus, the best workflow and setup for downloading your files from the seedbox, using multiple http connections with jDownloader. In that way, you can avoid some traffic throttling of ISPs.

Note: If you run add-apt-repository and it’s not recognized as command etc, then it doesn’t exist on your system, so if you run Ubuntu < 14.04 you should install python-software-properties, if you use Ubuntu >= 14.04 you should install software-properties-common

Ubuntu < 14.04

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apt-getinstall python-software-properties

Ubuntu >= 14.04

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apt-getinstall software-properties-common

Add transmission’s ppa:

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add-apt-repository ppa:transmissionbt/ppa

apt-getupdate

Install transmission packages:

Change settings:

In order to be able to download your files from your seedbox you should change the directory accordingly (see downloading section below). The other option you should care about is rpc-whitelist, you need to change it to “*” if you want your seedbox to be managed remotely.

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nano/var/lib/transmission-daemon/info/settings.json

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"download-dir":"/var/www",

"rpc-username":"yourusername",

"rpc-whitelist":"*",

"rpc-password":"yourpasswordhere"

After changing settings you should reload transmission-daemon

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/etc/init.d/transmission-daemon reload

Transmission webUI & transGUI

Transmission comes with a built-in web interface that allows you to use it, set limits, insert magnet links or upload .torrent files directly from your PC. Use the address of your server and you will be prompted to type the username and the password from the configuration file.

In case you want to use transGUI, which is a remote standalone GUI for transmission, you can download it from here.

Extract contents of the compressed file in the folder of your choice and run the executable file. Note: in some cases you need to mark your file as executable from terminal (chmod +x executablefilename) or from file manager’s properties permissions tab.

Now you need to configure the connection manager with the credentials and address of your seedbox. Once you open transgui go to Torrent -> Connect to transmission -> New connectionand fill connection name, remote host.Check Authentication Required checkbox and type your username and password in the fields.

trnsguitransGUI new connection

Downloading files from your seedbox

I tried until now ftp, sftp, scp and rsync. The most efficient way, and user friendly, in my experience is http. Some hours a day or permanently, your ISP may throttling your traffic per protocol or per connection rate. All you have to do is to setup a web server like nginx and tell transmission to place downloaded files in its directory. Keep nginx default settings and enable autoindex option so your files can be indexed and downloaded with multiple http connections via a download manager like jDownloader.

As you can notice in the image below there are three global limits you can set to jDownloader.Max. Con. is what we looking for. Fill the number of connections of your choice and then start downloading your files. Note that you must place the number of maximum connections before start downloading.